The film touted by critics as the most powerful propaganda piece ever was created for the Nazis -- it was also made by a woman. The bold and beautiful Leni Riefenstahl got her start as a ballet dancer in pre-war Berlin. When she saw an early Arnold Fanck film on mountaineering, she was literally swept away by its motion and energy. Soon she was acting in Fanck's films and learning to become a skilled mountaineer -- she even allowed two avalanches to fall on her head in the name of art. In 1932 she directed, produced, and starred in "Das Blaue Licht" ("The Blue Light"), a romantic film with Wagnerian undertones that is set in a fairytale landscape. Riefenstahl was meticulous in her work, planning shots to the letter, focusing intensely on picture quality, and editing in unusual rhythms appropriate to the subject. She also filmed on real locations instead of studio sets. She has called her acting in the role of Junta, a beautiful witch who is both hated and loved by the townspeople, a "premonition" of her own destiny: both women would face a shattering loss of their youthful ideals.
Riefenstahl, who was never a member of the Nazi Party, found favor with Hitler and was enlisted to make a film of the 1934 Nuremburg Party Convention. The result was "Triumph of the Will." Riefenstahl has since called it a "pact with the devil," but at the time she gave it the very best of her considerable talents. She employed 30 cameras and 120 assistants in the filming, inventing unprecedented techniques, such as hoisting a camera up a flagpole so it could shoot over an enormous crowd. Dramatic intensity, traveling shots (the crew filmed on roller skates), and creative camera positions characterize the film. Riefenstahl spent five months editing the film for 10 to 20 hours each day, treating it "like a musical composition." It won numerous awards, including a gold medal at the Venice Film Festival.
"Olympia" followed -- another incredibly beautiful documentary which covered the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. The work was acclaimed in America as one of the world's ten best films. A tribute to the idealized human body, it took her two years to edit. Again, she employed brilliantly inventive techniques: digging pits to film athletes from below, attaching a small camera to a balloon for aerial shots. After "Olympia," Riefenstahl was sent to Poland to photograph the German invasion. However, she was so horrified by the atrocities she witnessed, she filed an official complaint and left immediately. She vehemently denies accusations that she used gypsy concentration camp inmates for her 1940 film "Tiefland."
In the aftermath of World War II, both the Americans and the French imprisoned Riefenstahl for her role in the Nazi propaganda machine. She never made another film, though she was released after four years. In 1994 a documentary film about her appeared with the title "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl." The remarkably lucid 90-year-old Riefenstahl describes her filmmaking techniques and defends herself against the harsh accusations that have hounded her throughout her life. Riefenstahl claims she was essentially ignorant of inhumane Nazi activities -- for her, art and politics were two separate things. One significant question has been recently raised: why were male artists who tolerated or even supported Hitler -- including Salvador Dali, G.W. Pabst, and Céline -- able to successfully revive their careers, while Riefenstahl was not?
But Riefenstahl was not to be entirely repressed. At the age of 60, she went alone to Africa to live with the Nuba tribe for eight months. A book of the resulting photographs was published in 1973. At 70, she passed a scuba diving test and embarked for the next several decades on an entirely new career of underwater filming -- becoming possibly the oldest diver in the world.
New on Patriot Paradox: Interview with Chewed Gum
Those who knew Riefenstahl with whom I am acquainted alwasy maintained she wasn't really a Nazi, and I think she has had something of a bad rap.
The full version of Triumph of the Will in German is still, with her Olympia among the very greatest of films.
It's curious that some of the greatest early films, still revered to day, were propaganda pieces: Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will, Battleship Potemkin, Grand Illusion, The Great Dictator.
"'Hitler's Filmmaker' Dies at 101 Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will' called best propaganda film ever"
